Work Text:
During their Hogwarts days, Tom and Harry were inseparable. Sharing late nights in the library and quiet walks by the Black Lake. Everyone knew they belonged together.
And on the very night they graduated, under a sky full of stars, Tom dropped to one knee and asked Harry to marry him. Harry had said yes for they were truly deeply in love with each other.
Happily Ever After?
Nope, let's continue....
ִֶָ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִִֶֶָ🥀་༘࿐
10 years later, things began to change.
Tom grew distant. The warm smiles vanished, replaced by coldness.
He stayed out late, locked himself in his study, and barely looked at Harry when they passed in the hallway.
Harry tried to ask what was wrong, but Tom only brushed him off, saying he's fine and that Harry doesn't need to worry about him.
Then came the afternoon that destroyed everything.
Harry walked into their bedroom, expecting to find Tom reading. Instead, he found the door ajar and heard noises that made his stomach drop.
Pushing the door open, Harry saw Tom in their bed with Bellatrix.
The betrayal was painful. His mind spun, unable to process what his eyes were seeing.
For weeks, Harry had felt Tom pulling away. He had noticed the cold looks and the long silences. He had already assumed, deep down, that Tom was falling out of love with him. But Harry never could have imagined this.
He never expected that Tom had already given his heart to someone else.
That night, after Bellatrix had finally left, the quiet house felt suffocating. Harry stood in the living room, his hands shaking as he confronted Tom.
He wanted answers.
He wanted Tom to tell him it was a mistake, a momentary lapse in judgment, anything to make the pain stop.
Instead, Tom just looked at him with detached eyes. The warmth Harry had loved for years was entirely gone.
"You're no longer the one I love." Tom said.
Those words shattered Harry’s heart The man he had planned to spend his entire life with was looking at him like a stranger.
There was nothing left to save.
Without saying another word, Harry walked up the stairs. His movements were numb as he packed his clothes and a few personal belongings into a single suitcase.
He didn't cry in front of Tom. He couldn't let Tom see how completely destroyed he was.
As the sun began to rise, Harry left the house.
He bought a ticket and left Britain entirely.
ִֶָ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִִֶֶָ🥀་༘࿐
At first, Tom thought he would be fine. He thought he could finally focus entirely on his own future.
Tom told himself it was exactly what he wanted.
But is it?
As the weeks turned into months, the silence in the house starts bothering him.
Every time Tom walked through the front door, he expected to see Harry sitting by the fire or cooking in the kitchen.
He would catch himself turning around to share his thoughts with Harry, only to face an empty room.
The sheets on the bed still faintly smelled like Harry, a reminder of the night he had ruined everything.
Slowly, the cold wall Tom had built around himself began to crumble. He stopped seeing Bellatrix, realizing that she meant absolutely nothing to him. She couldn't fill the void.
No one could.
As a year passed, a deep ache took root in Tom’s chest. He started missing Harry with a fierceness that frightened him.
He missed the sound of Harry's laughter, the soft way Harry looked at him, and the absolute safety of being loved by someone so completely.
One night, sitting alone in the dark living room, the truth finally hit Tom.
It was a realization at the fact that he couldn't live without Harry.
He had chased power and independence, thinking they would make him great. But without Harry there to share it, the power felt hollow.
Tom looked at his hands and realized that all his brilliance and pride were worthless. Without Harry, he was nothing.
He was just a lonely, broken man living in the ruins of a life he had destroyed with his own hands.
ִֶָ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִִֶֶָ🥀་༘࿐
Three years passed before Harry finally returned to Britain. He came back for work, his head held high and his heart guarded.
During his time away, Harry had done the hard work of healing. He had learned to breathe again, to smile, and to accept what had happened.
He had moved on with his life, and the memory of Tom Riddle no longer had the power to make him cry.
But Tom had spent those three years trapped in the past.
He hadn't moved on at all.
The moment Tom heard that Harry was back in the country, something desperate came alive inside him.
He immediately dropped everything to find Harry, determined to win him back and fix the broken pieces of their life.
However, the Harry he found was not the gentle, forgiving boy he used to know.
Harry was more stubborn now.
When Tom first approached him, offering smooth apologies using his Riddle charms, Harry just looked right through him, his eyes completely cold.
Tom quickly realized that words alone would not save him.
So, the proud, arrogant Tom Riddle began to change. He shed every ounce of his pride.
He started showing up at Harry’s apartment at all hours, standing outside in the pouring rain just for a glimpse of him.
Tom begged. He fell to his knees on the hard pavement, crying and clutching at the hem of Harry’s coat, pleading for just one more chance.
He crawled through the dirt of his own mistakes, completely humiliating himself in front of the man he had wronged.
It was a time of suffering for Tom.
Every rejection from Harry felt like a knife twisted into his chest. His nights were sleepless, his body grew thin, and his heart ached constantly.
He was paying for his betrayal ten times over, living in total misery while Harry remained unmoved by his tears.
ִֶָ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִִֶֶָ🥀་༘࿐
For months, Tom kept showing up, pouring his heart out and refusing to leave Harry alone.
Finally, unable to take the constant pestering any longer, Harry agreed to sit down and talk to him.
They met in a little café in Diagon Ally. Tom sat across the table, his eyes bright with desperate hope.
He thought that maybe, just maybe, his months of begging and suffering had finally touched Harry’s heart.
But the talk did not go the way Tom had dreamed.
Harry looked at him across the table. There was no anger in Harry’s eyes, only an empty space where his love used to be.
"Tom, you need to stop," Harry said coldly. "I am telling you this because I want you to move on. You can't keep doing this to yourself... and you can't keep doing this to me."
Tom felt the air leave his lungs. He reached across the table, his fingers desperately trying to touch Harry’s sleeve, but Harry gently pulled his arm back, out of his reach.
Tom’s heart broke into a thousand pieces.
"Why?" Tom whispered, his voice full of sorrow. "Why, Harry? I changed. I threw away my pride, I stopped seeing everyone else, and I’ve spent every single day regretting what I did. I love you more than my own life. Please, just tell me why you won't even try."
Harry looked at Tom’s tear stained face, and a flash of pity crossed his green eyes.
He spoke the final, crushing truth that Tom feared the most.
"You're no longer the one I love." Harry said. They were the exact same words Tom had used to destroy Harry years ago. Hearing them now, Tom felt the last bit of hope die inside his chest.
He stared at Harry, his mouth opening and closing, but no sounds came out.
He had killed Harry’s love, and no amount of begging could ever bring it back to life.
ִֶָ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִִֶֶָ🥀་༘࿐